About you and your Project

You are an author of an open source project which has proven to be popular, or you think it has potential to be popular, and you have a dream of being able to work on it full time so that you could do what you love without starving or ending up on the street. Or maybe you would just like your project to not burn a hole in your wallet? Maybe you would like something in the middle where you want the project to help you out as it has helped so many other people.

All of these are worthy goals, and no you are not crazy or arrogant to think that something you make could do any of the above while remaining free.

First thing you need to do is set a goal, pick one of the three:
1 I want my project to not cost me money
2 I want to make a little when I help so many others
3 Make enough to quit your day job and really have your project shine

My desires are clearly directed to goal #3, and I am going to assume your goal is the same. If you have #1 or #2 as your goal don't stop reading -- your goal will be a lot easier to achieve, but you will still need at least some of these tips to go down those paths. Yet goal #1 should be easy to achieve, in fact just having a "donate" button may take care of #1.